An anthology of the most important Dáil debates of the last sixty years covers vital economic matters, Northern Ireland and the nation’s ongoing difficulties with matters of sexual morality and their consequences.

Big Houses may mean culture and civility, but they are also at the nub of a whole system of property, labour and production and engage the hard-headed qualities of the gentry as well as its more high-minded impulses.

A new book on the Latin American left asks profound questions about the quality of societies being constructed and comes up with a fascinating portrait of left-wing administrations seeking to balance their supporters’ demands with the dictates of market orthodoxy.

Historians who cannot engage with Irish-language sources risk fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the public sphere, which in Ireland was long associated with orality and manuscript rather than print culture.